My friend David Brookes remarked the other day that he feels that his real life only began in the last ten years or so—since he came back to music. The way he spends his leisure time, many of his interests, and above all his friends, are part of the music world, a world that is so vivid and absorbing it manages to make the first half-century of his existence seem like a warm-up for now.

And yet he, like so many of us, somehow left the music world behind for decades. I began to wonder why. How better to find out than to ask the many resuming musicians I know? These are some of their stories.

I had the pleasure of being at Humboldt this summer with Julie Marx, whom I had met as a viola participant at CMNC. This was Julie's first week-long workshop. That it was Humboldt was significant, because six years ago Julie attended an Elderhostel there and happened to notice the chamber music workshop in progress. We all know the daze of happiness we're in during our workshop week. This joy was quite apparent to Julie, and she immediately made up her mind to be part of the workshop too. But how could she? She had played music as a young person, but had just re-started the viola after a long lapse. She doubted if it would ever be possible. And yet, six years later, there she was!

Julie's mother was a music teacher who started her on violin at the age of four. But playing came hard, and Julie cried when she had to practice. At age five she switched to piano, which was a little better. Then one day, when she was in junior high, she bought a trumpet for $7 in a pawn shop. This was a big break-through—she fell completely in love with the brass sound. Her bandmaster said he really needed a French horn, so she switched over. She took no lessons, but it came naturally. She still played some violin and viola (she would ride her bicycle to school carrying a violin, a horn and her schoolbooks) but the horn was her instrument.

She went off to college at Pomona and played in the orchestra, but had to transfer to Stanford so she could live at home and help care for her mother. At this point she thought, “If I want to find a husband I'd better not play the French horn!” Apparently the strategy worked. She got married right out of college.

Four kids followed, and music mostly disappeared—not completely, but almost. This is a common thread in resuming stories, by the way. We are just so busy in our twenties, starting families, beating the bushes to make a living and all that. If we're going to stop, that's when we do it.

Julie divorced in her 40's and even sold her horn. Life went on somehow until she moved to Napa in 1996 to help her daughter with a new grandchild. She knew no one, so to meet people her thoughts turned to –music! First she joined a handbell choir. Then, for two years, she played two-piano music with a friend. She started meeting chamber musicians, found and fixed up her mother's old viola, had a few lessons, and became determined to play well enough for chamber music.

Playing viola was still as discouraging as it had been when she was four. She says it's just so hard to make a string instrument sound good! (This from a woman who found the French horn easy?) But she persevered and found some people to play with though she was, as she says, “a rank beginner.” Soon her transformation into an avid string player was complete.

A side of resuming stories I find intriguing is the changes people experience when they return to music. Julie says that she now feels she is playing music. When she played as a younger person, she felt like she played downbeats with the conductor. Then, music was part of life; now, it is her life. She's in five or six groups, including two string quartets, two piano groups, and a clarinet/viola/-piano trio. She has even written out the cello parts of piano trios for viola so she can play them too. She does everything but play in orchestras, which she avoids because she doesn't care to be part of a section—as a horn player she was always a soloist!

Julie has now been to several CMNC workshops, and this summer was her triumphant arrival at Humboldt. On the first day, I asked her how she was doing and she told me she wasn't sure she'd get through the performance. By the end of the week she was a star.

From a resuming viola star it's just a short step to an oboe star: Eva Langfeldt. Eva played oboe from 6^th grade through high school, though she had no lessons until her junior year (as well as she can recall, a band teacher taught her.) By the end of high school she had become serious about music and majored in it in college, doing a double major with languages. She also continued her longtime involvement in early music, playing recorder and other early wind instruments and taking up the viola da gamba. Then, after graduate school, in the early 80's, she moved to the Bay Area and completely stopped playing oboe.

Why she stopped had to do with not knowing anyone in the classical scene—her music contacts were in early music—and with feeling discouraged about the oboe. Reeds were a problem (apparently reeds are always a problem); she also felt she had reached a plateau in how fast she could tongue. Mostly, though, she stopped because she now had a son. The childbearing years claim another musician! She did still play in a recorder quartet, but felt relieved not to be involved in what she calls the "masochism of the oboe”!

Here comes the unique twist to Eva's story. Just as having a son contributed to her giving up the oboe, it was her son who brought her back. In San Carlos there is something called “Bandarama.” It's a yearly event, held at Central Middle School, in which band kids from 5^th grade up, plus teachers, parents, and everyone else who wants to all come together for a single evening per year and sight-read great quantities of band music. Her son, who was learning the saxophone, came home from school and told her about it. He was only in 4^th grade and couldn't go himself, but he said, “Mom, get your oboe out and go!” Eva was surprised he even knew she had an oboe. Yet somehow he had sensed that this was something she needed to do. So she found a reed, went, and loved it. Then she put her oboe away.

This went on for three years. Each year she took out her oboe for Bandarama, then put it away again. Finally, after the third year, she took it out and kept it out. By this time she had met some local musicians who had been active in chamber music, including Barny and Nancy Abrams. She began to actively look for music. San Carlos, it turns out, had a town band, so she joined it. Music was taking over her life again.

She then moved to Danville, where she met Larry George. Larry became her oboe playing mentor and swept her up into the music scene there. She found out about CMNC and began attending workshops. She's now in two orchestras and a band, is an avid chamber music player, and is in the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society. She's trying to make up for lost time and reports that her husband never sees her at night—she's always out playing. (Luckily they are both self-employed and work at home, so they see each other during the day.)

I asked her about the difference in her playing now and before. She reports she plays much better now. She took a few lessons and broke through her tonguing plateau—fast tonguing is not as much of a problem. It took her a few years to deal fully with the reed issue, but she is making them again and has become relatively proficient. The “masochism of the oboe” is a thing of the past.

She also says that when she was younger she had tremendous trepidation that she would soon be “too old to play.” Now she knows that playing itself keeps you young. For her 50^th birthday she had a chamber music party. Many pieces were played, and she was in every single piece. Asked what she would say to anyone thinking of getting back to an instrument, she says, “Resume! Be brave and do it! Find some people at your level and grow together.”

© Copyright CMNC 2005